Step Inside the 'Love Story' Set—How Muted Color Palettes and Strategic Styling Help Tell JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's Romance

Attempting to depict a specific era on television or film requires meticulous attention to detail—especially when it's the 1990s in New York City. In FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, the production team carefully crafted an atmosphere that accentuates an eminent couple while highlighting an intimate historical setting. Here's how the team seamlessly transported every viewer into this significant moment in time.

Set Design as a Form of Time Travel

Set design teams work diligently to ensure every detail aligns with the time period, aesthetic, and overall atmosphere they're trying to convey; even small inaccuracies can take the viewer and actors out of a scene. Production designer Alex DiGerlando said they often had to determine whether a character would realistically own an item, even though it existed at that time.

"DVDs came out in the '90s, but they weren't in popular rotation until a certain year, DiGerlando says. "So John doesn't get a DVD player in his loft until the latter episodes."

The production team also encountered challenges with the computers in Calvin Klein's office. "CRT monitors don't line up with the frame rates of movie cameras, so they roll when they're on screen," DiGerlando explains. "We did research on how to bleach the plastic from those computers, and then to get the screens to work, we put flat-screen TVs inside so they don't roll."

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's Upper East Side Bedroom

To honor a beloved historical figure like Jackie Kennedy, DiGerlando conducted multiple deep dives to bring her visual identity to life—think searching through Sotheby's catalogs, acquiring photos from national archives, and accessing floor plans.

"It [Jackie's bedroom] is such an intimate space, really the most private thing in the show, DiGerlando says. "There's the scene of her burning her personal correspondence in that fireplace—we wanted to make that a real fortress of solitude for her. And when I found that painting of her reading to her kids, I was like, 'we need to make a version of that for the show, because that seems like such an important detail of the character.'"

As for palettes and textiles, the production team often intertwined their envisioned color palettes with replicas of furniture Jackie had, according to the archives.

"People who love Jackie, love Jackie. So I didn't want to make something that was not true to what it was... She had a lot of pattern on pattern—it was busy with reds... We tried to copy the furniture as much as possible. The striped sofa, in actuality, was a light blue stripe. We made ours a pink stripe, so it matched our palette. Everything was based on something real, but we tweaked it slightly to fit our look."

John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Tribeca Apartment

Minimalism was the show's main aesthetic, strategically woven throughout the sets. One space that truly honored the aesthetic was John's industrial-style loft in Tribeca. From glass blocks to gray palettes, these key components were included in John's apartment and scattered across other sets to create a cohesive mood board.

"He's got the stark, spare space—black, white, and gray—that's in conversation with Calvin Klein's. In another way, he has some pieces of more antique furniture that whisper back to Jackie's, which he inherited from the Kennedy family," DiGerlando says.

Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's East Village Apartment

When DiGerlando read about Carolyn's apartment, it was described as lively and unstructured. The production team took this symbolic opportunity to reveal deeper layers of her character. DiGerlando compared the space to that of a painter's studio: while the finished artwork appears cohesive, the creative process behind it involves many moving parts.

For Carolyn, her wardrobe serves as her palette and a form of expression, shaping the apartment's design while still allowing moments of glamour to shine through. And because the team wanted to maintain the minimalist aesthetic, they carefully balanced her creative personality and undeniable elegance. Trinkets and personal items were scattered across vintage furniture pieces, with small lighting sources and warm-toned wood throughout.

Her smaller apartment was also designed to echo John F. Kennedy Jr.'s vast loft. Both spaces feature glossy floors and bare walls, creating a visual dialogue between them. At the same time, Carolyn's apartment was subtly in conversation with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's, especially in terms of color palettes. DiGerlando notes this melancholy detail: two women so deeply intertwined, despite having never met.

Calvin Klein's Headquarters

"Our story spans from 1992 to 1999, and over the course of that time, the look of the offices evolved. When he [Calvin Klein] opened his offices in the '70s through the '80s, into maybe the early '90s, he used designer Joseph D'Urso. And then, he hired British architectural designer John Pawson, who designed the Madison Avenue flagship store, which opened in 1995. Our version of the showroom is based on the Pawson store. But Calvin's office, which we recreated very loosely to the real thing, was more representative of the D'Urso era," DiGerlando explains.

The production team consulted archival images and designers when putting together the Calvin Klein office. The circular black granite table with chrome legs that rolled around in his office? That was a D'Urso-designed table, according to DiGerlando. The designer was known for using industrial materials in high-end settings, like the gunmetal powder-coated industrial shelving units and three-pronged floodlights.

"We picked and chose what details we liked the most. The basic layout of the bullpen was pretty much an invention. I wanted to use glass brick because it was such a popular building material at the time, and it also does great things with space, as you can imply space beyond it without actually having to see it. So by having just a couple of extras walk behind the wall of glass brick, it looks like there's a lot of activity going on right on the other side of that wall," DiGerlando says.

How to Watch the Series

Whether replacing archival photographs with images of Naomi Watts, weaving color palettes across sets, or drawing from his own experiences living in 1990s New York City, DiGerlando and the production team approached every detail with intention. To stream the limited series before it's over, tune in on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. New episodes air weekly on Thursdays on FX and are available to stream the same day.